Digital meets Culture

Berlin (Germany) and online streaming, 21-23 October 2024

EOSC Symposium 2024

The EOSC Symposium 2024 will be a critical event on the path to EOSC post-2027. It is a key event to network and exchange ideas with policy makers, funders, and representatives of research institutions, research communities, and data- and e-Infrastructures active in the EOSC ecosystem.
The EOSC Symposium 2024 will take place on 21-23 October 2024 at the H4 Hotel Alexanderplatz in Berlin, under the patronage of the German Minister for Education and Research Bettina Stark-Watzinger.

It is divided into twenty-six sessions that address, among other things, the ambitions of the EOSC Tripartite Partnership, the EOSC Federation, the launch of the EOSC EU Node, the EOSC landscape, including the European Common Data Spaces and the Artificial Intelligence trends, and the impact and contributions of stakeholders.

Online streaming will be available, registration required.

Programme: https://eosc.eu/symposium2024/#programme

More information and registration: https://eosc.eu/symposium2024/

online, 27 September 2024

Shaping the Future of Cultural Heritage

Shaping the Future of Cultural Heritage: Connecting the Cultural Heritage Cloud with the common European data space for cultural heritage and the European Open Science Cloud.

The Cultural Heritage Cloud – or European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage (ECCCH) – is a European Union initiative to create a digital infrastructure that will connect cultural heritage researchers and professionals across the EU. It will develop specific digital collaborative tools for the sector while removing barriers for smaller and remote institutions. The goal is to help cultural heritage institutions, research organisations and other professional organisations of all kinds and sizes to work with their digital objects in a more visible, interconnected, harmonised, and informed way, to successfully cope with the challenges the digital transition poses to the sector and seize its opportunities. The Cultural Heritage Cloud will add a new digital dimension to cultural heritage preservation, conservation, restoration and enhancement by providing cutting-edge technologies, for instance for the digitization of artefacts or for researching artworks. The implementation of this initiative has now begun with the EU-funded project ECHOES – European Cloud for Heritage OpEn Science, which started on the 1 of June 2024.

Two other initiatives are currently running at European level:

funded by the Digital Europe programme, the common European data space for cultural heritage is an EU flagship initiative to accelerate the digital transformation of the sector and foster creation, access and reuse of heritage data.
The vision for the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) is to put in place a system for researchers in Europe to store, share, process, analyse, and reuse data within and across disciplines and borders.

In this webinar, we’ll learn more about the Cloud and two other European initiatives, and how they are interconnected and complementary, how these initiatives interact with the Cloud, and what the added value of such connections is for the cultural heritage community.

More information and registration HERE

online streaming, 9 September 2024

ECHOES – European Cloud for Heritage Open Science launch event

The ECHOES project is set to begin the new academic year with its highly anticipated Launch Event on September 9, 2024, at the historic Château of Chambord in France. Following the project’s official start in June, this event will gather partners, stakeholders, and prominent local, national and European figures in the Renaissance Château de Chambord, a symbol of the rich cultural heritage of the Val de Loire.

The Launch Event will be an opportunity to present the ECHOES project to the public and feature keynote speakers who will discuss the importance of preserving both tangible and intangible cultural heritage across Europe. The public event will conclude with a dinner in the Château de Chambord, offering attendees a chance to network and celebrate in a setting steeped in history.

The public part of the event will be streamed online from 16:00 to 18:00 CEST/UTC+2, with the following agenda:

Introduction by Rickard BUCKSCH, Policy Officer, EU-DR Research and Innovation
Presentation of ECHOES by Xavier RODIER, CNRS. Scientific coordinator, ECHOES
Presentation of the ECHOES main Pillars: Community Pillar: Isabelle PALLOT-FROSSARD; ECHOES Pillar Coordinator. President, FSP; Knowledge Pillar: Dimitris KOTZINOS; ECHOES Pillar Coordinator. CY Cergy Paris University, ETIS Lab, Innovation Pillar: Paolo CIGNONI; ECHOES Pillar Coordinator. Research Director, CNR-ISTI; Sustainability pillar: Vania VIRGILI ECHOES WP Leader, Long-term Sustainabilty. Director of Technological Research, CNR
Keynote speaker Sally CHAMBERS Director, DARIAH-EU: “Interconnecting knowledge: cultural heritage data from a Digital Humanities perspective”
Keynote speaker Livio DE LUCA Researcher, CNRS/Project ‘Notre-Dame Numérique’: “Notre-Dame de Paris: a cathedral of digital data and multidisciplinary knowledge for heritage science”
Q&A session

For more information, please visit the website.

Collaboration agreement has started between the SECreTour project ad the DHRLab in August 2024

SECreTour and the UNESCO Chair on Digital Cultural Heritage at the Cyprus University of Technology

The SECreTour project has established a collaboration with The Digital Heritage Research Lab (DHRLab) in Cyprus.

The Lab, established in 2013 at the Department of Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering and Informatics at the Cyprus University of Technology, is devoted to research on the digitisation, documentation, archiving, preservation, protection and promotion of the tangible and intangible cultural heritage.

At European level, the DHRLab collaborates with a network of over 150 key partners from academic, research and industrial sectors, working towards the development of new tools and applications, including the cultural tourism domain. To this regard, it is worth to mention that the Lab participated in the former IMPACTour and TEXTour EU projects funded under the Horizon 2020 Programme.

DHRLab is hosting the unique UNESCO Chair on Digital Cultural Heritage. It has rapidly achieved world-spectrum of collaborative research projects and has created a remarkable wide research network and an agenda with great potential for future activities (such as the H2020 ViMM Manifesto, Roadmap and Action Plan).

Some of the latest achievements in the Lab are significant with unique international awards like the EU Best Innovation Award at the Fair of European Innovators in Cultural Heritage, European Commission Research Executive Agency REA: 10 years supporting excellence in science/REA’s life-changing projects and Innovation Radar Capturing, Digitisation technologies in Cultural Heritage, the EU Study VIGIE2020/654 Study on quality in 3D digitisation of tangible cultural heritage, as well as the establishment of the first Competence Center on 3D Documentation in Cultural Heritage on the island of Cyprus.

The collaboration of SECreTour and DHRLab has just started, but it is already planning joint initiatives, among which the next workshop on cultural tourism at the EUROMED2024 conference that will run from 2 to 4 December 2024 in Limassol.

Ghent 16-20 September, 2024

iPRES 2024 International Conference on Digital Preservation

The 20th edition of the International Conference on Digital Preservation is taking place in Ghent from 16 to 20 September 2024.

Four organizations act as a core consortium for the organisation of iPRES 2024. They are: Digital Archives Flanders, Ghent University, Meemoo, Flemish Institute for Archives, and VRT is the public broadcaster of the Flemish Community in Belgium.

iPRES is a major conference series on digital preservation, which runs since 2004, with annual iPRES conferences in rotation on four continents.

This conference offers a very rich programme, bringing together a strong community of scientists, students, researchers, archivists, librarians, digital content providers, and other experts. Workshops, presentations, tutorials, panels and posters will be the occasion to share recent developments and to learn about the results of innovative projects.

Further information about iPRES are available at https://ipres2024.pubpub.org/

2 July, 2024 online

1st cluster meeting of projects on cultural tourism in rural areas

The four sister projects funded under the Horizon Europe call HORIZON-CL2-2023-HERITAGE-01-05 met on 2/7/2024 for the 1st cluster meeting on cultural tourism in rural areas.

Representatives of the projects participated in the meeting together with the Project Officer of REA (Research Executive Agency) and of the Policy Officer of the European Commission.

Each project presented to the others their objectives and expected outcomes with the aim to establish a factual collaboration and to identify opportunities of further exchanges and networking.

The SECreTour project was presented by Antonella Fresa of Promoter srl, leader of the work package on Cooperation, networking, macro-regions, crossborder. The Project Coordinator Jose Maria Martin Civantos of University of Granada and Carsten Jacob Humlebæk of Copenhagen Business School participated in the debate to illustrate the SECreTour initiative.

The presentation of SECreTour is availble here for download.

You can read more about partners and workplan of the initiatives at the respective project’s websites:

CULTURALITY: https://culturalityproject.eu/

SECreTour: https://secretourproject.eu/

Toural: https://toural-project.eu/

For the CROCUS project you can look at the fact-sheet available on the EU CORDIS service: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101132454

The workshop, held on 17 July 2024, was an initiative of the pilot Italian Country Group of the Europeana Network Association

EUreka3D presented at the Italian online workshop on sharing collections to Europeana

Workshop “Discover how to share high quality cultural contents with Europeana” an event of the Italian Country Group of the Europeana Initiative, took place on 17 July 2024, opened by Marianna Marcucci for Europeana Network Association and led by Maria Teresa Natale of the MUSEU accredited aggregator.

During this online workshop, targeted to Italian institutions, participants learned how to share cultural contents in order to improve their visibility, how to foster their reuse, and how to become part of a large professional community.

As the discussion unfolded, Valentina Bachi, project manager of EUreka3D, was invited to share some insights about the various challenges faced by Cultural Heritage Institution in approaching digitization in 3D and sharing of data in the new common European data space for cultural heritage.

About the Europeana country groups >>

Scopri come condividere contenuti di alta qualità su Europeana July 17th, 2024

Perché e come condividere i tuoi contenuti digitali con Europeana:

Più visibilità: Fai conoscere le tue collezioni a un pubblico più ampio.
Riuso: I tuoi contenuti possono essere utilizzati per l’istruzione, la ricerca e le industrie creative.
Comunità: Diventa parte di una rete di professionisti del patrimonio culturale digitale.

Il workshop:

Impara: Scopri come condividere contenuti di alta qualità su Europeana.
Metti in pratica: Prepara un record della tua collezione da condividere sulla piattaforma.
Standard: Scopri come applicare lo standard EDM (Europeana Data Model).
Terminologie: Arricchisci i tuoi dati collegandoli a terminologie standard.
Diritti: Impara a gestire le dichiarazioni sui diritti d’autore.
In poche parole: condividi i tuoi contenuti digitali per aumentare la loro visibilità, favorire il riuso e unirti a una vasta comunità. Il workshop ti fornirà le competenze per farlo al meglio!

online, 11 September 2024, h. 14 CET

EUreka3D showcased at EGI webinar presenting the Data Hub

This webinar presents the latest advancements in EGI DataHub, an innovative distributed data access and management platform powered by Onedata technology. EGI DataHub unites 18 data providers across Europe, offering seamless data access and management capabilities. In the webinar, the EUreka3D services and tools will be presented by Łukasz Opioła, Researcher and Onedata team leader at Academic Computer Centre CYFRONET, AGH University of Krakow.

Info and registration: https://www.egi.eu/event/egi-datahub-platform-ingestion-management-publishing-distributed-scientific-data/

Key topics:

Comprehensive data management flow; from ingestion, through processing and annotation, to publishing and archiving.
Enhanced Open Data publishing; among numerous improvements, the platform now supports the Europeana Data Model metadata. We will showcase the EUreka3D project, a real-world application relying heavily on DataHub.
New data access interfaces, including S3 and a lightweight PyFilesystem (Python) plugin, to enhance flexibility and accessibility for various use cases.
Evolved GUI; particularly the file browser has undergone significant improvements, making data management more intuitive and efficient.

This webinar is designed for a diverse audience, including:

Researchers and data scientists seeking efficient access to distributed data.
Developers interested in integrating with the Onedata system or creating middleware solutions.
Administrators and data providers looking to leverage the latest platform features.

Agenda

Presentation (15 min)
Demo (30 min)
Q&A (15 min)

Call open until October 20, 2024

AIPAI Photo Contest 2024

It’s now open the call for the 3rd edition of the AIPAI Photo Contest, the photography contest organized by the Italian Association for Industrial Archaeological Heritage ETS in collaboration with: DICEA – Sapienza University of Rome, Do.co.mo.mo Italia, Ministry of Culture – General Secretariat – UNESCO Office, AEM Foundation (Milan), ISEC Foundation (Sesto San Giovanni), Maire Tecnimont Foundation (Rome), Musil Foundation (Brescia), RoMe Museum Exhibition and Rete Fotografia.

The contest is designed to raise awareness and promote the culture of industry, the memory of work, the architectural, technological and landscape heritage of industrial archaeology, is aimed at professional photographers, amateurs, students, temporary or permanent groups, associations, without limits of age and nationality who will be able to tell, document and represent the industrial heritage through a photographic project, to be presented by 00.00 on 20 October 2024.

For the winners are up are three 1000 euros prizes, publication in the magazine “Patrimonio Industriale” and display in a traveling exhibition of the winning, mentioned and selected shots.

For the thematic areas of the contest and more information, follow this link.

in collaboration with ICA International Council on Archives, three events on Formats, Authenticity and Preservation

EUreka3D webinar series – Fall 2024

The International Council on Archives (ICA) and the EUreka3D Consortium are organizing the second webinar series on 3D Digitisation and Digital Transformation of Cultural Heritage, following the success of the 2023 edition of the webinar series, which attracted over 300 attendees from all over the world.

The three sessions will take place in autumn 2024, and will focus on formats, authenticity and preservation for 3D and digitisation in the cultural heritage field, delivered by expert speakers and renowned professionals.

This informal training activity is aimed at archivists and records management professionals, CHI professionals, 3D digitisation and digital infrastructure providers, digital humanities researchers, and students in all these fields.

The webinar series is part of the partnership between ICA and PhotoConsortium, coordinator of EUreka3D. This initiative is also part of EUreka3D Capacity Building Programme, which provides online and onsite training to CHIs for high-quality standards of digitisation, advanced metadata management and aggregation to Europeana, enriching the common European data space for cultural heritage.

Read more and access details and registration: https://eureka3d.eu/transforming-heritage2024/

Webinar 1: 26th September h. 16 CET

Digital Media Authenticity
The rapidly evolving field of AI-powered image processing tools have revolutionized digital media content. These tools allow us to denoise images, enhance resolution, and even colorize black-and-white photos, opening exciting new possibilities. However, the same underlying technology also made it easier to generate artificial content or manipulate existing media, raising serious concerns about the trustworthiness of what we see. As the line between genuine and altered content blurs, the importance of transparency in digital media provenance has never been greater, particularly in the context of preserving our cultural heritage through digitization. This webinar explored the latest advancements in provenance signalling and best practices for ensuring media authenticity and transparency.

Agenda

Welcome by Josée Kirps, president of the International Council on Archives (ICA)
Introduction by Antonella Fresa, EUreka3D project coordinator (PDF, 1.1 Mb)
Keynote speech by Frederik Temmermans, Multimedia interoperability researcher at Vrije Universiteit Brussel-imec. JPEG committee member (PDF, 6 Mb)
Q&A and Conclusions by Ilaria Fava, Communications Specialist at EGI Foundation
End of the webinar h. 17

Webinar 2: 24th October h. 17.30 CET – World Day of Audiovisual Heritage

A new dimension for the Audiovisual Heritage: a EUreka3D initiative
Audiovisual archives bear witness to all the audiovisual production, and the thousands of images preserved on a wide range of media enable an unprecedented narrative about our past. Besides, audiovisual heritage includes all the devices that made it possible to capture and to show all this imaginary. The significance of this heritage has been taken into account in the EUreka3D project through the digitisation of the pre-cinema collection of the Cinema Museum of Girona. In this webinar, we will explain, from CRDI experience, how Archives face the challenge of the 3D digitisation considering the need to achieving high-quality digital reproduction. We will talk about the need of skilled professionals, the existence of a working methodology, the ability to analyse the complexity of the objects to be reproduced, the criteria to assess the results and the commitment of making these 3D materials accessible online.

Agenda

Introduction by Antonella Fresa, EUreka3D project coordinator
Keynote speech by David Iglésias Franch, CRDI/Ajuntament de Girona. PAAG (Photographic and Audiovisual Expert Group / ICA)
Q&A and Conclusions by Natalija Lace, National Archives of Latvia and PAAG Committee member
End of the webinar h. 18.30

Webinar 3: November 2024
File formats and preservation in cultural heritage

The webinar starts with a description of the recently published HTJ2K, JPEG XL, and JPEG AI image coding formats, emphasizing the features each offers that make them particularly attractive for storage, distribution, visualization, and interactions in archival and long-term preservation applications. We then discuss JPEG Pleno Point Cloud Coding, which is expected to be published as an International Standard by ISO and IEC in early 2025, and can be used to code 3D content, represented as point clouds, among others in archival and preservation applications. The webinar will end with a look into an emerging standard known as JPEG DNA, an image format for archival on DNA support, by motivating the reasons behind this effort and its roadmap.

Agenda

Introduction by Valentina Bachi, PHOTOCONSORTIUM, EUreka3D project coordinator
Keynote speech by Prof. Touradj Ebrahimi Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), Convenor of JPEG standardization Committee: An overview of recent and emerging JPEG formats for digital archival and long-term preservation
Q&A and Conclusions
End of the webinar h. 16

Touradj Ebrahimi – Biography
Professor at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), heading its Multimedia Signal Processing Group. He is also the Convenor of JPEG standardization Committee. He was also adjunct Professor with the Center of Quantifiable Quality of Service at Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) from 2008 to 2012. His research interests include still, moving, and 3D image processing and coding, visual information security (rights protection, watermarking, authentication, data integrity, steganography), new media, and human computer interfaces (smart vision, brain computer interface).

These virtual sessions will be held in English. Interpretation into other languages will not be provided.